Note l — BOOK I.

It would be endless to specify the Uses of the Air in Nature’s Operations: I shall therefore, for a Sample only, name its great Use to the World in conserving animated Bodies, whether endowed with animal or vegetative Life, and its contrary Quality of dissolving other Bodies; by which means many Bodies that would prove Nuisances to the World, are put out of the Way, by being reduced into their first Principles, (as we say), and so embodied with the Earth again. Of its Faculty as a Menstruum, or its Power to dissolve Bodies; I may instance in Crystal Glasses, which, with long keeping, especially if not used, will in Time be reduced to a Powder, as I have seen. So divers Minerals, Earths, Stones, Fossil-Shells, Wood, &c. which from Noah’s Flood, at least for many Ages, have lain under Ground, so secure from Corruption, that, on the contrary, they have been thereby made much the stronger, have in the open Air soon mouldered away. Of which last, Mr. Boyl gives an Instance (from the Dissertation de admirandis Hungar. Aquis) of a great Oak, like a huge Beam, dug out of a Salt Mine in Transylvania, so hard, that it would not easily be wrought upon by Iron Tools, yet, being exposed to the Air out of the Mine, it became so rotten that in four Days it was easy to be broken, and crumbled between one’s Fingers. Boyl’s Suspic. about some hid. Qual. in the Air, p. 28. So the Trees turned out of the Earth by the Breaches at West-Thurrock and Dagenham, near me, although probably no other than Alder, and interred many Ages ago in a rotten oazy Mold, were so exceedingly tough, hard, and found at first, that I could make but little Impressions on them with the Strokes of an Ax; but being exposed to the Air and Water, soon became so rotten as to be crumbled between the Fingers. See my Observations in Philos. Transact. Nᵒ. 335.